Southmoreland's Brandon Stone (23) puts an offensive rebound up for a score to give his team a 49-48 lead wiht under three minutes left to play in the fourth quarter against Avonworth on Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017, in Peters Township. Southmoreland won 64-55 in overtime.

Christopher Horner | Tribune-Review

Penn-Trafford's Sarah Nguyen heads the ball away from the net over Norwin's Katelyn Kauffman, as goalkeeper Megan Giesey looks on late in their game Monday, Sept. 25, 2017, in Harrison City. Penn-Trafford won, 1-0.

Christopher Horner | Tribune-Review

Penn-Trafford's Lauren Stovar heads the ball next to Norwin's Emily Arnold during the second half of their game Monday, Sept. 25, 2017, in Harrison City. Penn-Trafford won, 1-0.

Christopher Horner | Tribune-Review

Penn-Trafford's Jared Phillips (2) battles Norwin's Ian Brown for a header during overtime in their game Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, in Harrison City.

A sneaky-good WPIAL girls tennis rivalry opens to another chapter this week.

Greensburg Central Catholic will get a rematch with Sewickley Academy when the teams meet at 3 p.m. Monday at Shady Side Academy in the WPIAL Class AA semifinals.

Last year, GCC lost to the Panthers, 5-0, in the quarterfinals.

GCC also fell to Sewickley three years ago in the semis, 3-2. However, it was advantage GCC when it beat the Panthers in the WPIAL championship in 2013.

Golf finals

Three more individual golf champions will be crowned this week with the WPIAL Class AAA boys finals Tuesday at Nemacolin Country Club in Bealsville, and the Class AAA and AA girls championships set for Wednesday at Diamond Run Golf Club in Sewickley.

Westmoreland County has had golf champions before, but it has been a few years since a local player won.

Former Southmoreland basketball standout Brandon Stone is garnering attention from coaches around the country.

Wake Forest coach Danny Manning recently was in to see Stone, the 6-foot-11 combo-forward who transferred to The Christ School in Arden, N.C.

Stone has a dozen Division I scholarship offers, Penn State and Houston among them. Stone said he will visit Pitt on Oct. 13 and Indiana Oct. 21.

Bouncing back

The Norwin girls soccer team rebounded from its first loss since rising to No. 1 in the Top Drawer Soccer national rankings.

After a 1-0 loss to Penn-Trafford that ended Norwin's 47-game unbeaten streak in regular-season play, and a 43-game unbeaten streak in section games, Norwin (8-1, 4-1) downed Baldwin on Saturday.

Some called Norwin's loss stunning. But maybe the it wasn't as surprising considering the competition that it once overshadowed: Penn-Trafford has nine starters back from a team that went 15-4-1 and made the WPIAL Class AAA quarterfinals. Among them are seniors Mackenzie Aunkst (West Virginia), Hannah Nguyen (Duquesne), Lauren Stovar (Army) and Brady Tramuta (Seton Hill), and junior Kiley Dugan (Valparaiso).

The Warriors (8-2, 5-0) are a game ahead of Norwin in Section 4-AAAA.

Norwin could feel a sense of relief after the loss, an itchy blanket of pressure off at least one leg.

“You can't have an undefeated season every year,” Norwin coach Lauren Karcher said. “Maybe it's good to get this out of the way now and move on.”

Tight section

Boys soccer in Section 4-AAAA should be a slugfest as it decides its four WPIAL playoff teams — and a section champion.

Heading into the weekend, there was little space between the teams with Franklin Regional leading at 7-2, Norwin next at 5-2-1, Connellsville at 6-3, Penn-Trafford at 5-2-2 and Latrobe at 3-6.

Franklin Regional and Connellsville each have split with Penn-Trafford and Norwin. Penn-Trafford plays at Norwin on Oct. 12.

Belle Vernon record

Excuse the Belle Vernon boys soccer team for being greedy. Goalkeeper Cam Guess and the Leopards have put a bank-vault door over the net this season.

Belle Vernon (9-1-1) shut out nine of its 11 opponents, including seven consecutive “clean sheets,” as the soccer folks say, to set a team record. The Leopards have clinched a WPIAL playoff spot and host Section 3-AAA-leading Ringgold Tuesday at James Weir Stadium.

The 2010 team had the previous record of five straight shutouts.

Zemba steps down

Rich Zemba resigned as girls basketball coach at Derry after five seasons. He is working at a new job that requires more of his time.

Two seasons ago, Zemba guided the struggling Trojans to their first outright section title and first winning season since 2008. He finished with a record of 38-68 with two WPIAL playoff appearances.

You are solely responsible for your comments and by using TribLive.com you agree to our
Terms of Service.

We moderate comments. Our goal is to provide substantive commentary for a general readership. By screening submissions, we provide a space where readers can share intelligent and informed commentary that enhances the quality of our news and information.

While most comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, moderating decisions are subjective. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. Because of the volume of reader comments, we cannot review individual moderation decisions with readers.

We value thoughtful comments representing a range of views that make their point quickly and politely. We make an effort to protect discussions from repeated comments either by the same reader or different readers

We follow the same standards for taste as the daily newspaper. A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence, proselytizing and SHOUTING. Don't include URLs to Web sites.

We do not edit comments. They are either approved or deleted. We reserve the right to edit a comment that is quoted or excerpted in an article. In this case, we may fix spelling and punctuation.

We welcome strong opinions and criticism of our work, but we don't want comments to become bogged down with discussions of our policies and we will moderate accordingly.

We appreciate it when readers and people quoted in articles or blog posts point out errors of fact or emphasis and will investigate all assertions. But these suggestions should be sent
via e-mail. To avoid distracting other readers, we won't publish comments that suggest a correction. Instead, corrections will be made in a blog post or in an article.